"The movie was better."

Forrest Gump. While the first movie does get some flack for its "schmaltzy" tone, the book's tone is just all over the place.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. While I think the central metaphor of the book is flawed^note Bruno is supposed to represent German civilians apart from the Nazis', and Shmuel represents the Jews, but it comes off as "the good Germans were completely unaware that Nazis were abusing and killing Jews" and addresses nothing about their complicity in allowing the Nazis to gain power in the first place., the film does much better in depicting Bruno as a well-meaning but still naive child. In the book, Bruno is a massive idiot who has never heard of Hitler, can't pronounce basic German, and continues to believe all the way up to the end that the neighboring concentration camp is just some kind of carnival. The film makes him more investigative and also patches some plot holes as to how he and Shmuel could meet, such as why the guards weren't spotting him or where the electric fence was.

edited 1st May '17 2:36:43 AM by Tuckerscreator

I have to say I find the James Bond movies generally better than the books. While the movies obviously aren't perfect in that regard, the books are packed with absolutely tremendous Values Dissonance that, while a pretty fascinating look into the mentality of '50s Britain, makes them pretty hard to read at times too. Examples from the books that were cut from the movies include Bond befriending an unrepentant rapist in From Russia with Love, Bond's belief that women shouldn't have been given the right to vote and that Koreans are a different species in Goldfinger, and the fact that Fleming seems to feel the need in most books to point out that pretty much any competent minority character, good or evil, is part-white.

The books also have a lot of weird Contrived Coincidences, places where the plot grinds to a halt to describe the luxurious food Bond eats in excruciating detail (wish-fulfillment for post-WWII Britain), and this is probably just my opinion but I feel like having SPECTRE be there from the beginning makes a lot of the evil plans more complex and interesting.

edited 29th Apr '17 5:29:18 PM by HamburgerTime

I am partial to the 2003 Count of Monte Cristo being somewhat better than the original novel. They're kind of starkly different, the book focusing more on character drama while the movie is a lot more of a swashbuckling adventure. The book really has a lot of useless filler and while definitely better written, I was always kind of appalled by the Count's (and the story's) shitty treatment of Mercedes and the fact he marries a 14 year old to ride off into the sunset happily ever after.

I feel the movie was more satisfactory to me by just being more fun and handling the whole Mercedes thing better.

It also has Jim Caviezel in it and John motherfuckin' Reese makes everything better

edited 29th Apr '17 5:42:18 PM by Gaon

The Green Mile. The film actually very faithfully adapts the novel (which was originally published in short installments as...I dunno, a gimmick I guess, like King needs gimmicks to sell books) while cutting out superfluous stuff (we don't really need to know about Paul Edgecomb's life at the nursing home). I think the best film adaptations are like that, cutting out only what doesn't really contribute to the central story.

Shawshank's Redemption. Not that the movie changes much of the basic story, but the detail it adds makes all the difference. The main character is more likable (one of the few changes is that in the story it is suggested that he paid off someone to get rid of his rapists, in the movie he keeps struggling against them until they go too far and the warden take care of them because he has become too useful for them at this point), but there is also a better explanation why he even ended up in prison on so little evidence as a white rich guy. In addition it is an exceptionally well acted and well directed movie, which gives a lot of moments in the story just more punch.

Isn't this basically a complaint thread? We're not supposed to have those.

You'd have a more accurate point if this thread was "the movie was worse", i.e complaining about movies not getting the spirit of the book.

We're talking about movies going above and beyond the book. Focus is on the movie's quality rather than the book being bad. Plenty of posts here also note they like the book, just prefer the movie for whichever reason (I.e the green mile post not too far above).

Like Psycho was actually a perfectly decent popcorn novel, readable. But the film was transcendent.